These two collections give us a vivid picture of wool staplers in their public and private lives.  The Cely papers cover the years 1475 to 1488, and it so happens that during that period William Stonor (he became Sir William in 1478) also became interested in the wool trade, for in 1475 he married Elizabeth Riche, the daughter and widow of wealthy city merchants.  The Stonors had great sheep runs on their estates in the Chilterns and Cotswolds, and William readily perceived the advantage of his alliance with Elizabeth’s family, who were interested in the wool trade.  Consequently he entered into a partnership with a friend of his wife’s, a Merchant of the Staple in Calais, named Thomas Betson, who is the subject of this study, and until Elizabeth’s death in 1479, he took an active part in the export trade.  Thomas Betson died in 1486, and was thus an exact contemporary of those other Merchants of the Staple, George and Richard Cely, whom he must have known; indeed, William Cely, their cousin and agent, writes from London to George in Calais in 1481, advising him that he has dispatched 464 fells to him in the Thomas of Newhithe, ’and the sayd felles lyeth nexte be afte the maste lowest under the felles of Thomas Bettson’.[8] By the aid of the ’Stonor Letters and Papers’, which contain many letters from and concerning him during the years of his partnership with Sir William, and of the ’Cely Papers’, which are full of information about the life of a Merchant of the Staple at Calais, Thomas Betson may be summoned before us by a kindly magic until he almost lives again.  So he deserves to do, for he is one of the most delightful people revealed to us in any of the fifteenth-century letters; for honest charm he has no rival save the attractive Margery Brews, who married John Paston the younger, and shows up so pleasantly beside the hard Paston women.

Perhaps the reason why our hearts warm immediately towards Thomas Betson is that our first meeting with him plunges us immediately into a love affair.  His first letter to William Stonor is dated April 12, 1476, and informs William that their wool has come in to Calais.  ’Right worshipfful Syr,’ it begins, ’I recomaund me unto your good maystershipe, and to my right worshipffulle maystresse your wiffe, and yf it plese your maystershipe, to my maystresse Kateryn.’[9] Ten days later he writes again from London, on the eve of sailing for Calais, thanking Stonor for his ’gentle cheer and faithful love, the which alway ye bear and owe unto me, and of my behalf nothing deserved[H],’ announcing that he has sent a present of powdered[I] lampreys from himself and a pipe of red wine from his brother, and adding this postscript:  ’Sir, I beseech your mastership that this poor writing may have me lowly recommended to my right worshipful mistress, your wife, and in like wise to my gentle cousin and kind mistress Katherine Riche, to whom I beseech your mastership ever to be favourable and loving.’[10] Who was this Katherine Riche to whom he so carefully commends himself?  Katherine Riche was William Stonor’s stepdaughter, one of his wife’s children by her first husband; she was Thomas Betson’s affianced bride, and at this time she was about thirteen years old.